Top Ten Tuesday: Timely TBR

December 26: The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf (Maybe share your holiday book haul?)

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

That Artsy Reader Girl

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

I have had four days off, in a row including today, and did nothing productive until today (except cook/bake). Thankfully, I knew what I wanted to list for today’s prompt.

The first three are direct from Santa. The remaining seven are the most recent additions to my TBR list.

1 – 🎅🏻

Beholder by Ryan La Sala - listed on Top Ten Tuesday: Boo!

.

.

.

2 – 🎅🏻

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy – listed on Top Ten Tuesday: Boo!

.

.

.

3 – 🎅🏻

Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian – also listed on Top Ten Tuesday: Boo!

.

.

.

4

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang – Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best Fiction (2023)

•First published May 25, 2023 •336 pages, Kindle Edition •Contemporary, Literary, Thriller, Mystery

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.
White lies
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.
Dark humour
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media.

goodreads

5

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune – Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best Science Fiction (2023)

•First published April 25, 2023 •432 pages, Kindle Edition •SciFi, Fantasy, LGBTQ+, Romance

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots–fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.
When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe.

goodreads

6

Weyward by Emilia Hart – Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best Historical Fiction (2023) and Best Debut Novel (2023)

•First published February 2, 2023 •336 pages, Kindle Edition •Historical, Debut, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Witches

I am a Weyward, and wild inside.
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

goodreads

7

The Housemaid’s Secret (The Housemaid #2) by Freida McFadden – Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best Mystery & Thriller (2023)

•First published February 20, 2023 •318 pages, Kindle Edition •Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller

It’s hard to find an employer who doesn’t ask too many questions about my past. So I thank my lucky stars that the Garricks miraculously give me a job, cleaning their stunning penthouse with views across the city and preparing fancy meals in their shiny kitchen. I can work here for a while, stay quiet until I get what I want.
It’s almost perfect. But I still haven’t met Mrs Garrick, or seen inside the guest bedroom. I’m sure I hear her crying. I notice spots of blood around the neck of her white nightgowns when I’m doing laundry. And one day I can’t help but knock on the door. When it gently swings open, what I see inside changes everything….

goodreads

Do I need to read the first book of the series before reading this one?

8

Hell Bent (Alex Stern #2) by Leigh Bardugo -Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best Fantasy (2023)

•First published January 10, 2023 •484 pages, Kindle Edition •Dark Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Paranormal

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.
Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, …

goodreads

Another one where I wonder if it would be better to read book #1?

9

The Wager by David Grann -Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best History & Biography (2023)

•First published April 18, 2023 •352 pages, Kindle Edition •History, True Crime, Mystery, Adventure

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story.

goodreads

😵‍💫whoa.

10

Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond – Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best Nonfiction (2023)

•First published March 21, 2023 •287 pages, Kindle Edition •Politics, History, Sociology, Economics, Social Justice

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?  In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. 

goodreads

Got a feeling this one is going to fire us up. 🔥

Thoughts: